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Shenandoah National Park

I slept in late, but got out of the room by check out time.
I stopped at Petco to pick up some food for River before hopping on US-33 toward Shenandoah National Park.

We spent the bulk of the day at the park, climbing on rocks, exploring trails and just hanging out taking in the bucolic setting.

Looking down over a 'hollow'

chilling on the brick wall

King of the rock

Looks like there was a little fire here, but life goes on.

What's that in your hand?? It looks yummy....

Why yes, I would like that dehydrated liver treat, thank you.

Checking out the view from the trail

I stopped to meditate on a tree stump; River sat in my lap.

River leaves his mark every few feet. He doesn't want us to lose the way back, I guess.

He's very good at coming back to me. If he gets too far ahead, I call his name and he returns to my side.

I included myself in a video.

I could've spent all day here, but we only spent a few hours. Every few hundred yards was another place to stop and check out the view. And there were dozens of trails; we only took one. There were also picnic areas and campgrounds.

It was $20 to get into the park, but I got in with my Annual Pass. So far, I've gotten $31 of admissions out of my $80 card.

I would definitely come back to this place. I wouldn't mind camping here, and I'd love to take more of those trails.

After we'd had our fill, we got on I-64 and headed toward Richmond. We stopped at a rest area so I could feed River, and I stopped at a great BBQ place called Ronnie's. I will write more details about that on my Burgers and BBQ Across the USA blog page.

When we checked into the Motel 6, she gave me a room that was being remodeled or had squatters living in it or something.There was a pile of garbage on the floor. The mattresses were bare. Empty pizza boxes on the TV and a fork and some batteries on the table.
She obviously didn't realize this, and when I went back to the office to tell her, she was surprised. But she gave me a different room. This new room had bread crumbs on the floor. Otherwise, it was clean. Compared to that first room, it was quite satisfactory.

Actually, the more I look at the picture, the more I see that it's just a mess. My first impression was that it was destroyed, but maybe that's what most of the rooms look like between the time people leave it and the next person comes in.

One of the things that I love the most about moteling is that I never have to clean up after myself. That's easy to get used to. But I would never leave a room with this much garbage in it. My mess is more like clutter, not trash. And when I leave, I take all my clutter with me, so what's left are a bunch of wet towels and maybe a few scraps of paper. But I use the trash basket, at least!

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